Chet Williamson (Click bar below for description) About Symposium Panelist
Reflecting his ability to play a wide variety of musical styles, Williamson has shared stages with many of the world's most popular and finest musicians, including Sleepy LaBeef, Alan Dawson and Joan Osborne. His jazz credits include gigs with Rich Greenblatt, Jack Pezanelli, Reggie Walley, Dick Odgren and Emil Haddad. Williamson's blues connections are just as deep and varied. As a teenager he played a weekly jam session in the Great Brook Valley Housing Projects. Since then he has performed with such notable players as Kenny Pino, Ken Vangel, Joanna Connor and Troy Gonyea. Williamson's chromatic harmonica styling can be heard on She's Busy's Strange Bedfellows, Valerie and Walter Crockett's Moonbone and Emily's Angel, Mike Duffy's Destined to be a Rumor, and the Movie Channel's station ID, "Try a Little TMC."
His own CD release, Chromatic Swing, features jump blues and standards from the Swing era. In his review of the album, Scott McLennan from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette said, "Chromatic Swing is Williamson's voice coming through loud and clear. The disc is a cooking session of Swing era gems associated with the likes of Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Harry 'Sweets' Edison. It's a likable fusion of jazz and blues traditions made possible by a cast of strong and colorful players." In performance, Williamson is a dynamic performer who combines his love of blues and jazz into a mutual landscape of joyous sound. In addition to local gigs that range from Gilrein's to Mechanics Hall, he has performed throughout Central New England, parts of Canada and Europe.
Williamson is currently maintaining three working ensembles, including, Chromatic Swing, A Herd of Cats (which showcases the pyrotechnics of bluegrass and bebop with the Gypsy swing of Django Rheinhardt), and a duo with guitarist Steve Cancelli, a player of impeccable sound and taste. Hear him on the Monica Hatch CD, If You Never Come To Me. The duo features classic swing and indigo blues mixed with cool bossa novas, impressionistic ballads, originals, standards, and harmonica favorites.
The award-winning and critically acclaimed Williamson began his professional career in writing in 1988. As a freelance writer, Williamson has been featured in the Worcester Telegram, Worcester Monthly, North Shore Living, Artscope, JazzEd, and Blues Wire. Before taking the job as A&E Editor at Worcester Magazine in 1998, he had been a regular contributor to that publication since 1993. Over the years he has written about everything from art and entertainment to sports and politics. He lists Sonny Rollins, B.B. King, Laura Nyro and Waylon Jennings among his favorite interviews.
Williamson is also the author of The Jazz Worcester Real Book, which features bios, profiles and compositions of 100 local musicians. Released by Worcester Publishing Ltd., it is available at: worcestermag.com. He continues to write about Worcester's jazz history for the New England Jazz History Database. He may be heard on radio station WICN 90.5 Monday through Thursday on his show "Jazz Matinee".
|
|
Ran Blake (Click bar below for description) About Symposium Panelist
In a career that now spans five decades, pianist Ran Blake has created a unique niche in improvised music as an artist and educator. Blake’s most significant mentor and champion was Gunther Schuller. The two began their forty-year friendship at a chance meeting at Atlantic Records’ New York studio in January 1959. Less than two years earlier, Schuller coined the term “Third Stream” at a lecture at Brandeis University. Blake’s long association with Schuller, modern classical music, and Schuller’s controversial term began here, and was forged by years of friendship, collaboration and innovation. In 1973, Blake became the first Chair of the Third Stream Department, which he co-founded with Schuller at the school. He still holds this position—though the department was recently renamed the Contemporary Improvisation Department. 2012 marked Blake’s fifty years as a professional recording artist (with more than 40 recordings), making him one of most resilient artists in jazz history.
|
|
George Schuller (Click bar below for description)
About Symposium Panelist
(drums, composer, arranger, producer), a native of New York City, moved to Boston in 1967 where he was raised and educated, and later received a bachelor's degree in Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1982. For the next twelve years, Schuller was a fixture on the Boston area jazz scene performing with Herb Pomeroy, Jaki Byard, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Mick Goodrick, John Lockwood, Ran Blake, Lisa Thorson, Billy Pierce, Bruce Gertz, Mili Bermejo, John LaPorta, Dominique Eade and Hal Crook.George Schuller |
|
Jerome Harris and Jamie Baum (Click bar below for description)
About Symposium Panelist
Jerome Harris has won international recognition as one of the more versatile and penetrating stylists of his generation on both guitar and bass guitar. His extensive international work has included several stints in Japan with Sonny Rollins, as well as tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Harris conceived and organized "Living Time": George Russell's Musical Life and Legacy, an in-depth examination of the work and life of legendary composer/bandleader/theorist/educator George Russell. Harris's scholarly interests have led to an essay, "Jazz on the Global Stage," published in the anthology The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited by Ingrid Monson (Garland). |
|
Ken Schaphorst (Click bar below for description)
About Symposium Paelist
A founding member of the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance, an organization in the tradition of jazz composer-directed ensembles dedicated to the promotion of new music in the jazz idiom, trumpeter and composer Ken Schaphorst has been awarded Composition Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and Meet the Composer. Since coming to NEC as Chair of the Jazz Studies and Improvisation Department in 2001, Schaphorst has directed the Jazz Orchestra in its performance of new music and traditional big band repertoire. Schaphorst also works with high school–age students at NEC with the Youth Jazz Orchestra, which he founded in 2008. A prolific composer and arranger, Schaphorst has received commissions from the NEA, Marimolin, Orange Then Blue, Boston University, Lawrence University, the Fox Valley Arts Alliance, the Jazz Composers Alliance, the Wisconsin Arts Board, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Ball State University, and Augustana College. |
|
NEC Jazz Orchestra - Ken Schaphorst Conducting
|
|
John A. Sergenian (Click bar below for description)
About Symposium Panelist
After completing his studies at Boston University with a BS in Public Relations, Sergenian graduated from New York University with a MA in Political Geography. Work Experience
|
|
Bob Meril and Allan Chase |